Nickb  20k - <AUTHOR> Congrats to nickb on passing 20,000 points, and thanks. <comment><USER2> Thanks pg for the site!

<comment><USER3> Not bad for a sock puppet: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152428>

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He's catching up to the bug fixer guy...

</comment><comment><USER5> This is not hacker news!

<comment><USER6> We should always take a bit of time to thank the people that make this place what it is.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. I meant it tongue-in-cheek...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Next milestone: 32,768?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but then you fall off the leader board, because your score is -1. :P

<comment><USER9> I think you mean -32768.

<comment><USER10> If it rolls over due to 2s complement then it'll be -32768.

What the -1 comment is refering to is a casting problem. Or int into byte, etc. Versus unsigned to signed.

<comment><USER8> Oh, duh. Brainfart. -1 would be 11111111 not 10000000.

While I doubt that HN's scoring would suffer from signedness bugs, if it did, getting your score down/up to -1 would be the ultimate. It would be an interesting easter egg to build into the system, tho :)

<comment><USER7> It shouldn't do that; AFAIK it's using PLT Scheme's numeric stack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Congrats and thanks for the contributions!

</comment><comment><USER12> Congrats indeed. Tons of great submissions = well-deserved.

</comment><comment><USER13> Congrats Nickb - his stuff is good. Does he have a bio?

<comment><USER14> <http://www.paulgraham.com/bio.html> :)

<comment><USER2> Sigh... pg and I are different people. Really.

<comment><USER15> I almost downvoted you for that lie, but I decided that it would be a misuse of the downvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thank you and please reveal yourself now :)

<comment><USER2> Hah! My identity is not actually secret at all :) But you're right, I'll put up a link to my bio/blog soon enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> pg congratulates pseudonym nickb [<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=152388>]? I wonder what the number of upvotes for this means...

Nevertheless, 20k certainly represents a valuable contribution.

</comment><comment><USER18> Congrats to Paul Graham's evil twin, sock puppet...whatever you wanna call it, haha

</comment><comment><USER19> Dude I am working hard to get to 2k.

</comment><comment><USER20> @nickb Very impressive, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER21> Congrats Nick!</comment>


DuckDuckGo Zero-click Info API  - <AUTHOR> http://www.mashape.com/apis/DuckDuckGo%20Zero-click%20Info <comment><USER2> Direct link to documentation: <https://api.duckduckgo.com/>. Please let me know if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can use the coupon DUCKDUCK the get immediately an invite and consume the API.

<comment><USER4> Thank you.</comment></comment>


The Gear Fetishists - <AUTHOR> http://go.c800colon5.com/blog/2014/03/04/the-gear-fetishists/

<comment><USER2> Oh man, this describes me as a musician, audio engineer and technologist. I've definitely spent too many hours researching the best text editor, operating system, new programming language, studio monitors, etc...

The best cure for gear acquisition syndrome I've found is shipping deadlines. "Real artists ship." Even if it's a hobby, progress is measured by some tangible event, whether it be a Github checkin, an upload to Soundcloud, a live performance, or a blog post.

Limitations also help. The most powerful DAW, programming language, or guitar pedal will force you to spend more time fiddling than creating. So what if it's not exactly the sound you hear in your head, or the webpage looks funny? It will never ship if perfect is the goal.</comment>


Job opening: Python/Django Developer (Washington, DC) - <AUTHOR>

`National Geographic Society) <http://www.nationalgeographic.com>`__ (Washington, DC, USA) <comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====
Job Description: The National Geographic Society seeks a seasoned Python/Django developer to design a new Content Management system.
Requirements
* Experience with: Python, Django, Linux/UNIX, PostgreSQL, vi editors, Jira, AJAX, JQuery, Perl
* Successful design, implementation, deployment and maintenance of high-traffic multi-server environment * Actively participation in design and code reviews * Ability to troubleshoot and fix production issues * Development of new software to support business initiatives
* A high degree of initiative and the ability to work independently
* Possession of US citizenship or a green card, as this is a permanent position
What Python is used for: The developer will join the Global Media and Application Development team that publishes web content and pipelines content to new devices and applications. S/he will build and maintain back-end applications to support the website and media asset management needs. S/he will participate in the planning and design of new applications.
Contact Info:
If interested and qualified, please submit your resume to firstname.lastname@example.com </comment><comment><USER2> Please wait for the monthly thread, see <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whoishiring>.</comment>


Google and the Search for the Future - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704901104575423294099527212.html

<comment><USER2> From the article - Eric Schmidt: "They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."</comment>


Leaving NetBeans for Emacs as my Ruby editor  - <AUTHOR> http://devver.net/blog/2008/08/leaving-netbeans-for-emacs-as-my-ruby-editor/

<comment><USER2> I really don't understand the desire for a heavy and resource intensive IDE. Emacs + Unix is the best development environment I could ask for. Don't call me naive either, because I've worked in some big companies where the engineering team was on the same wavelength.

Emacs is lovely since you can customize it to your flavour of IDE intrusiveness.</comment>


The Great Decoupling - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2015/06/the-great-decoupling <comment><USER2> Quoted from below, on whether income is relevant as a measure

[http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/05/19/income-as-a- measur...](http://www.propertarianism.com/2015/05/19/income-as-a-measure-is-a- pseudoscientific-distraction/)

"The question is better served by how we spend our time, what we consume, and what we worry about, than any measure of income. Income is a poor proxy for measuring inter-temporal changes in consumption, and is only a useful measure of temporal asymmetry.

What is for example, the cost of not fearing the soviet union, the change in crime in Boston and new York?

Conversely, what is the cost of increase in political friction due to immigration? What is the cost of the conflict over Obamacare? What is the cost of maintaining the post-war empire (probably neutral). What is the cost of outsourcing? What is the cost of failing to reform education?

Income is the least important of these measures. And that is precisely why it's the topic of conversation: because it is the least important but the most emotionally loaded topic. It is an elaborate pseudoscientific distraction for purely political purposes."

Interesting. I do not necessarily endorse this but he has influenced me much.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We're not saying that social choices have no effect, and for that matter, we're not saying that globalization has no effect, either. However, there seems to be a common underlying force that's affecting all these countries. We think that force is technology."

It would be nice if they expanded on that. What other trends are at work, aside from technology, that might also coincide with this "decoupling". Globalization and immigration are two things that merit more discussion. Why do they think technology predominates?

<comment><USER4> >Why do they think technology predominates?

Short answer: they probably don't. But they want _you_ to think that.

Technology is the _one driver_ that you can't blame anybody for. If technology is responsible for a loss of jobs, livelihoods and poverty, who can you blame? Nobody.

If globalization (by which we mean "trade policy like the TPP/TTIP/NAFTA/CAFTA"), de-unionization and steady corrupting effect of money on government are actually responsible instead, you have a small group of exposed people to point a pitchfork at. You can say _Larry Summers_ helped cause this. _Obama_ helped cause this. _Greg Mankiw_ helped cause this. Not progress. People.

That's not ideal if you are one of those elites.

So, blame the robots for everything and if anybody notices, call them a luddite.

<comment><USER5> > If globalization (by which we mean "trade policy like the > TPP/TTIP/NAFTA/CAFTA"), de-unionization and steady corrupting effect of > money on government are actually responsible instead, you have a small group > of exposed people to point a pitchfork at. You can say Larry Summers helped > cause this. Obama helped cause this. Greg Mankiw helped cause this. Not > progress. People.

> Brynjolfsson: No, similar trends are appearing in most developed countries.

Does your conspiracy theory encompass the whole globe?

<comment><USER3> "Does your conspiracy theory encompass the whole globe?"

It doesn't have to, it only has to affect those countries in which the decoupling is taking place. Not sure if that makes it more plausible or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paywalled, and the title gives no hint of what it's about.

<comment><USER7> I guess this image from the article will answer your question: [https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2015/05/R150...](https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2015/05/R1506D_MCAFEE_WHENWORKERSFALLBEHIND.png)</comment></comment>


Super-oarsmen vs. Lying Historians - <AUTHOR> http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2009/10/super-oarsmen_v.html

<comment><USER2> When it comes to the accuracy of historical numbers, I always think of the size of the Persian army at Thermopylae

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae#Persian_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae#Persian_army)

Historical accounts were still a form of propaganda back then.

<comment><USER3> And still are today. Seriously, try watching the same event covered by CNN vs a foreign news source, I won't even mention other cable news channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe they had a trailing wind.</comment>


Dependency Injection Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> http://rossipedia.com/blog/2013/08/dependency-injection-considered-harmful/

<comment><USER2> The article doesn't say that. More importantly, the headline doesn't say that. In fact, it says the opposite: Dependency Injection Considered Harmful? Not So Fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> My bad I missed the ? off. However the original SO question and the relevant comment ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18547909/what-would-be- th...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18547909/what-would-be-the-most- powerful-argument-for-writing-solid-applications#comment27285661_18547909)) states that "DI is essentially a bad idea". So I feel the title is a suitable fit either way.</comment></comment>


Stop using fork(). I mean it. - <AUTHOR> http://logicfault.blogspot.com/2014/03/stop-using-fork-i-mean-it.html

<comment><USER2> Link bait title. It's not really a fork() issue, it's all about concurrency problems. Beyond that, it's a crummy article. "Don't do concurrency" it says, "Leave that to The Experts". Well, screw that. Experts are all self appointed anyway, I'll do concurrency if I feel like it. And you should too. Any calls to put yourself in a mental straightjacket should be ignored.</comment>


After granting GrexIt OAuth privileges, a noticeable delay in email - <AUTHOR> http://bufordtaylor.com/post/33722661822/dont-use-grexit

<comment><USER2> This will actually happen for _any_ extension which requires many IMAP calls, or any combination of extensions thereof. As a Gmail extension developer myself, it takes a lot of effort to be efficient about your IMAP usage to avoid these kinds of issues.

IIRC, the Gmail tema has said that when most people report of slow Gmail mailboxes, it can usually be traced back to an overload of these extensions.</comment>


Free your mind, familiarize yourself with the Trivium (forgive the presenter) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GNJXuM2H4Rw

<comment><AUTHOR> The presenter is doing his best. Trust me though, the content is well worth the view.</comment>


Bloomberg/bucklescript: A back end for the OCaml compiler which emits JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript <comment><USER2> For those wondering how this differs from js_of_ocaml - [https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript/wiki/Difference- fr...](https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript/wiki/Difference-from- js_of_ocaml)

TL;DR

\- Debuggable output

\- Better interoperability

\- Faster compilation

<comment><USER3> js_of_ocaml has deep integration with the DOM, event handling, and tyxml (to emit HTML5 in a type-safe manner). It had a fine-grained reactive DOM before Facebook React was even a thing... Bucklescript could add those features, but it'd take a lot of work, and I'm not sure there would be much benefit over what js_of_ocaml offers.

The sweet spot for Bucklescript seems to be in exposing bits of computation- heavy logic through OCaml. The reimplementation of a 55k Immutable.js in 899 bytes of compiled JS makes me go oh-damn-did-you-see-that! On the other hand, js_of_ocaml has rather unparalleled support for building UIs -- which probably makes it a better choice if you want to do your whole web app in OCaml, especially in combination with frameworks like Eliom.

<comment><USER4> > _The reimplementation of a 55k Immutable.js in 899 bytes of compiled JS > makes me go oh-damn-did-you-see-that!_

Link?

<comment><USER3> Right there on the github page.

[https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript#more- examples](https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript#more-examples)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested in compiling OCaml to JavaScript, check out js_of_ocaml[0]. It's been around since 2011 or so, produces source maps, and has a nice FFI. It also works over the output of the bytecode compiler so there's no need to run a fork of the compiler. In my experience it's quite nice to work with.

[0]: [http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/](http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/)

<comment><USER6> This is apparently a fork of js_of_ocaml. I am not sure that I understand what Bloomberg has added/changed to make it this.

<comment><USER2> It's not a fork - it only uses a few parts of the JS pretty printer and runtime support. [https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript#licensing](https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript#licensing)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Their example is a bit of an odd choice, as it shows an imperative Ocaml function resolving 1:1 into javascript, would be nice to see a small example with some functional programming and how that translates.

<comment><USER8> Here you go: [http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/js- demo/](http://bloomberg.github.io/bucklescript/js-demo/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can BuckleScript translate (some?) Coq output to JavaScript? If so, what are the limitations?

UPDATE: Looks like the answer is (usually) "no"—Ocaml code generated by Coq frequently uses Obj.magic, which BuckleScript does not support. _sigh_

<comment><USER9> What happens if you declare an external function of type 'a -> 'b? Obj.magic is trivial to implement, it's just the typing that is wonky. (Disclaimer: I have never looked at BuckleScript or js_of_ocaml.)</comment></comment>


String to Hex Converter - <AUTHOR> http://codebeautify.org/string-hex-converter

<comment><USER2> man if this was an an api then i could use these from cmd line and a sublime text plugin. sooo fancy.</comment>


The Man Who Discovered the Sun's Puzzling Heat Is Being Forgotten - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-man-who-discovered-the-suns-puzzling-heat-is-being-forgotten <comment><USER2> Don't, just _don 't_ illustrate your article with gratuitous animations.

Or pop-over nags.</comment>


OpenLoopz: Getting Things Done on Android - <AUTHOR> http://sites.google.com/a/iode.co.uk/openloopz/walkthrough

<comment><USER2> It looks neat, web-syncing would be critical for me though.

On a broader note, I think you're targeting the wrong market. You're pitching it at the GTD market, people who understand phrases like "Open loops", but most lifehackers already have a a favourite GTD tool.

I think you'd be much better off trying to target your app at the mainstream, doing so would give you a huge upside potential which you would never see in the GTD market.</comment>


PCMCIA History: From Laptops to CableCards - <AUTHOR> http://tedium.co/2017/01/26/pcmcia-pc-card-laptop-expansion-history/ <comment><USER2> This took me a while to read because I ended up going down the rabbit hole of reading about the PoqetPC - a tiny subnotebook that could last for weeks or months on two AAs: [http://www.bmason.com/PoqetPC/](http://www.bmason.com/PoqetPC/)

<comment><USER3> I would pay lots for a modern thing with that form factor.

<comment><USER4> The Pandora [1] is a few years old at this point. I had one for a short while and wasn't too impressed. There will be an update called the Pyra [2] coming later this year.

[1] [https://www.openpandora.org/index.html](https://www.openpandora.org/index.html)

[2] [https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/](https://pyra- handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure why the article laments CableCard. It allows me to watch most of my cable channels using my HD HomeRun ethernet CableCard tuner using just VLC. The premium (think HBO) channels are protected by DTCP DRM but lets just say that isn't the most secure DRM ever. The proposed VidiPath replacement is just going to lock down the TV experience even more. It will allow cable companies to have a DRMed path to your display where they control every pixel, including the guide and DVR interface. It is directly aimed at taking out the likes of Tivo and Silicon Dust.

<comment><USER6> The primary lament of CableCard is that it's so poorly implemented that the vast majority of people aren't even aware that it exists. Moreover, things like "On Demand" content are baked into the cost of my subscription and I can't take advantage of them through a CableCard.

Cable Television, as we perceive it today, is in a steady decline (I'd cite something; but even the most cursory Google search will turn up dozens of articles confirming). While I recognize your concern about the cable company ownership and DRM, I believe that over-the-top services like Sling or DirecTV Now in conjunction with Netflix and Amazon are far bigger threat to Tivo and the like than anything the cable companies themselves can do.

<comment><USER7> But DirecTV Now _is_ , while not a traditional cable service, something a cable company is doing.

And that makes it the biggest threat to Netflix when net neutrality (and particularly the specific prohibition on ISPs favoring their own video services) is killed by the new leadership at the FCC.

<comment><USER8> I agree that things like DirecTV now is the future. As long as those services are owned by companies that have traditional cable/satellite/fiber services, they are going to try to upsell or limit these services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It should be noted that the modern "expansion bus" is not PCI or other such busses... but USB3.1.

Today, the best audio drivers are external USB DACs and amplifiers. You can extend your storage with GB of USB flash storage. USB->Serial has kept up as a legacy option (although its latency issues and Win7 transition has made things difficult to work with in practice... gotta keep that old WinXP box to work with a lot of Serial stuff. But that's not USB's fault per se and more about Windows Vista's new security model).

Audio (DAC, Headphones, Synthesizers, USB->MIDI, Instruments), Storage (USB Flash Drives, USB Hard Drives), video game peripherals (XBox Controllers, PS4 Controllers, Joysticks, Driving Wheels), even legacy (USB->Serial Modems if you really need it) are all supported from the 5Gbps USB3.0 port.

\</comment><comment>--

PCMCIA was needed in the 90s because computing power wasn't good enough. DMA transfers, directly to the computer's RAM, was the only way to get latency / bandwidth requirements of practical devices.

Furthermore, hardware interfaces were obscure. Your "Jazz drive" external storage was SCSI based and required a specific device. USB internet modems were years away from being invented (and thus you used PCMCIA modems on those laptops).

In essence... PCMCIA was the way you attached external devices to laptops back then. More so than USB or Firewire. Modern interfaces are more secure, more inter-operable, and faster.

I mean, those flash-sticks require a rather beefy CPU to handle all of the USB-packets that go back and forth between the OS and the USB stick. That level of miniature processor power just didn't exist in the 90s, so "dumb" hardware attachments had to use simple direct-to-memory transfers through a relatively simple bus. I wouldn't be surprised if a modern USB-stick's processor had more computing power than 90s-era laptops.

<comment><USER10> > I wouldn't be surprised if a modern USB-stick's processor had more computing > power than 90s-era laptops.

Data transfers are handled in hardware; the MCU in these is not really powerful. Many are just 8051s. USB 3.0 controllers are a bit beefier, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually had one of the two Amiga models (A600) that traded the generic properitary expansion slot for a PCMCIA one. However, living in the country I live in I never actually encountered a PCMCIA _card_. Catching on the topic years later it turned out I did not miss on much, PCMCIA being not very well defined at the time of A600's design phase, the slot wasn't really useful for anything more than a slow flash based disk drive or very sluggish memory expansion (there were some really neat gizmos you could put in there, but those came about YEARS later)</comment>


Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, and the end of civil disobedience. - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/24/edward_snowden_bradley_manning_and_the_end_of_civil_disobedience.html <comment><USER2> I am unsure if the comparison to Snowden and Manning is valid. As the article states Manning was/is in the military which basically has its own legal system. Beyond that, if the act of civil disobedience is reliant on there being minimal consequence, isn't that the issue? If something is important, isn't the point that it is worth the risk? I cannot claim to known Snowden's motivations, but accepting the consequences of one's actions seems an important component of civil disobedience.

<comment><USER3> Do the consequences one suffers at the hands of another agent for performing an action affect the moral quality of that action?

<comment><USER2> Good question. I think in the context of civil disobedience it does. Though to be fair, that is what the article is implying with Snowden. His motivations could be completely different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Question yourself this:

Why should Edward Snowden serve a lifetime in jail, or worse, get hanged because of our collective sin of obedience and fear to structure of criminal state executives?</comment>


Winston Churchill's Closest Confidant - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/winston-churchills-closest-confidant <comment><USER2> slight digression but great book on Churchill: No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money

[https://www.amazon.com/No-More-Champagne-Churchill- Money/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/No-More-Champagne-Churchill- Money/dp/1250071267)

[https://on.ft.com/2EUTgi7](https://on.ft.com/2EUTgi7) review

[https://youtu.be/xjpm44l8wD4?t=457](https://youtu.be/xjpm44l8wD4?t=457) video of author talk

<comment><USER3> Sounds interesting.

> Churchill's parents lived in grand style on fairly small incomes, borrowing > fortunes and spending even larger ones. Young Winston grew up thinking of > money as a nuisance that other people had to worry about. Churchill carried > on the family tradition tenfold when he became an adult.

I'm convinced you learn most of your financial wisdom or behaviour from childhood (and possibly some genetics thrown in). There always seems to be a pattern visible among the children and their parent's approach to frugality and spending. Probably affecting them in a way more subtle than they realize.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, the correlation between parent and child leaves open the possibility (likelihood, I would argue) of a significant genetic influence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was it Harry Truman who said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."?

</comment><comment><USER6> It must have been a trial to visit and deal with a halitosis flamethrower- strength handlicker with fleas, a congenital twitch and a leaky funstick. But Winston loved him and really that's all that matters. I wonder how Clemmie coped? Probably tried not to wince too much in public.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nowadays, I expect to see him referred to as "noted mass-murderer Winston Churchill", since I learned he ordered the death by starvation of 3 million people in Bengal.

By some estimates he out-murdered Stalin. You don't encounter many stories of how much Pol Pot or Hitler loved their respective hounds.

<comment><USER8> He also wanted to use chemical weapons against the indians, and there is some evidence he may have ordered them used against iraqis/kurds in 1921.</comment></comment>


The Swords of George Washington - <AUTHOR> https://www.mountvernon.org/preservation/collections-holdings/washingtons-swords/washingtons-swords-an-interview-with-erik-goldstein <comment><USER2> Pretty cool, I did not know Washington was a collector of swords.

I started collecting swords when I had one commissioned in Scotland from a guy that had been making display replicas for the British Museum. (I couldn't afford an original) and since that time have ended with about half a dozen. There is a tremendous amount of depth and variation in what is essentially a piece of steel on a handle.

<comment><USER3> I got really into 19th century British military swords after discovering the Scholagladiatoria YouTube channel [1].

I've always like swords, but the 19th century is so interesting to me because you can actually find relatively affordable originals. Plus we know a lot more about how 19th century swords were actually used because of the abundance of military manuals.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt14YOvYhd5FCGCwcjhrOdA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt14YOvYhd5FCGCwcjhrOdA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting read, for context small sword is a dueling gentleman weapon. Not very good at protecting yourself in battlefield. Problem is that it is very hard to parry a bayonet or a heavy sword with it, too light and since it lack an edge it is also hard to snipe the hands of the opponent with bayonet with a quick cut.

I wonder if Washington ever actually came to blows early in his career. What sword he used on that occasion and what his thoughts of the effectiveness were.

For an officer sword was weapon of last resort, however if you were gona have one might as well be useful weapon. When someone wants to spear you with a bayonet saber seems like a much better choice.

</comment><comment><USER5> Quite funny that I visited his estate in Mt Vernon just hours ago and now seeing this on HN frontpage. BTW, I think swords were necessecity in his time as army man because guns were unreliable and slow to reload after one shot. So all soldiers had to carry both. Washington was very wealthy man after he married wealthy widow Martha and as a famous general I can imagine him having collection of swords. He also had collected horse carriages. However on the whole he lives very simple life style.

<comment><USER6> Well soldiers today all still carry and sometimes use bayonets, which some regiments call 'swords', in case they need to fight in close quarters, so not much has changed.

<comment><USER7> They sure as hell do not "all" carry bayonets. Most don't (dead weight), and they are so very rarely used in modern combat that every time I ask for a cite it's always that one skirmish in Afghanistan from over a decade where no one was even _stabbed_ with a bayonet that gets linked.

Bayonets are obsolete, period, full stop. They aren't used in modern warfare to any degree that affects anything at all.

<comment><USER6> Here's a more recent one than a decade.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/9571522/Soldier- who-led-Afghanistan-bayonet-charge-into-hail-of-bullets-honoured.html)

The reason they're able to use them sometimes is that they're routinely carrying them. Fixing your bayonet is still a taught step in the drill for clearing an enemy position in at least the British Army I think.

<comment><USER7> Ah, so two bayonet "charges" in two decades. So relevant in modern warfare. And in neither situation were the bayonets even _used_ , just affixed.

It's worth pointing out that modern bayonets are basically just knives that can be attached to some rifles. Knives are useful for all sorts of things outside of combat. Bayonet length has also continuously decreased over time as they've essentially turned into knives (we're now down to a third of the original length). This is the modern US "bayonet". Note that it's essentially just a fixed knife. Hunters and hikers carry very similar knives for similar reasons, and not because they're being mounted on a rifle. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKC-3S_bayonet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKC-3S_bayonet)

<comment><USER8> Except you don't use a bayonet for any task besides killing for which you would otherwise use a regular knife.

<comment><USER7> Then by your standards bayonets have long gone extinct, as they are now regular knives that can technically still be attached to some rifles, but rarely are. See my link.

<comment><USER8> I was in the infantry for twelve years. You do not use a bayonet (a weapon) for tasks for which you would otherwise use a knife (a tool).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Medium and the Scourge of Persistent Sharing Bars - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/medium_dickbars <comment><USER2> It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read. Medium may still be better than most, but, like Gruber points out, they've been heading down a bad "growth hacking" path lately.

What really blows my mind is how awful so many websites from old publications with high-quality print editions are. A lot of these publications had quality standards for advertisers, and they worked hard to design nice-looking print layouts. As a result, even if there were a lot of ads they were at least unobtrusive and often kind of interesting and worth looking at in and of themselves. But it's like publishers are somehow incapable of thinking about a website the same way they think about a magazine.

When I end up on a website that takes fifteen seconds to load, makes text jump around as different ads are displayed and hidden, autoplays video, and pesters me with popups I wonder if anyone who works at the publisher ever actually uses their website. I mean, who, in their right mind, could ever think they were providing an even halfway decent product?

I have absolutely no sympathy when legacy publishers who peddle terrible, low- quality product struggle and go out of business. I mean, I hate to see media power consolidating into Facebook's hands, and it sucks when people lose their jobs, but these publishers have no one to blame but themselves.

<comment><USER3> "It's amazing how unpleasant most media sites are to read."

I cannot stop showing this to people:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey- pro...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/26/us/turkey-protesters- attack-video-analysis.html)

That is _amazing_.

The web has been perverted and prostituted and bent out of shape in every which way but _this_ ...

This is the promise fulfilled, 15 years later, of "web 2.0". This is what they were talking about and what we wanted but didn't know how to ask for.

<comment><USER2> That's awesome! I wish there was more content like that out there.

I find I've become more focused on following individual writers/journalists/bloggers these days and less attached to publisher brands. And a lot of signs point to the future of publishing being much more fragmented and focused on individual journalists. But when the NYT does stuff like that it shows how powerful and effective a big publishing organization can be. Maybe new ways for journalists to pool resources and collaborate will emerge?

<comment><USER4> It usually comes down to the hard work of a few key people either way. The publisher just gives them and the grunt-workers a steady paycheck.

<comment><USER5> The steady paycheck is what allows some (maybe even many) journalists to do amazing investigative reporting. I have a hard time imagining another way to have in-depth, months to years long ago investigations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _The SEO folks are the same dopes who came up with the genius strategy of requiring 5-10 megabytes of privacy-intrusive CPU-intensive JavaScript on every page load that slows down websites. Now they come to their teams and say, "Our pages are too slow — we gotta move to AMP so our pages load fast."_

You gotta admit, that's pretty much spot-on. The resources some of these websites consume is just mind-boggling.

<comment><USER7> Browsing the web with 5-10 open tabs is enough to use 100% of my cpu (Firefox and chrome). I wonder when and how things got so wrong.

<comment><USER8> ublock origin + privacy badger and you will have much less usage. I get 10x10 tabs (10 tabs in 10 windows) with few problems.

<comment><USER9> Agreed.

Ublock Origin's right-click / Block Element (then optional selection process) is an absolute boon to forever hide these artefacts.

Every now and then I'll try reading something on mobile chrome, or a friend's machine, and realise how annoying much of the web is for many people.

<comment><USER10> I had to turn off JS on mobile chrome for almost all websites, because they just wouldn't run on my phone.

<comment><USER11> Firefox for Android -- you can install extensions to block extra JS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > "Oh, crap, it's on Medium."

A general suggestion for programming blogs: instead of Medium, try using something like Hexo[1] or Hugo[2] and deploy for free on Github Pages or Netlify. Publishing content is as easy as `hexo deploy` or `git push origin master`.

You get complete control with a static site generator and can remove things like the sharing bar and animation. There is almost no maintenance required, because the site will be a collection of static HTML files.

[1] [https://hexo.io/](https://hexo.io/) [2] [https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for those suggestions. Hugo looks particularly awesome. I've been wanting to spin up a blog so I can write tutorials and such. I actually started building my own web app from scratch for it because I couldn't find a static site generator I actually liked. Hugo, on the other hand, doesn't look like it could be any easier.

<comment><USER13> I used Hugo recently for a one-off brochure site. It was predictable and straightforward and boring, and generally did what I needed it to do without getting in the way. A+++ five stars would recommend.

<comment><USER12> > It was predictable and straightforward and boring, and generally did what I > needed it to do without getting in the way.

This is usually how I know that a library is well put together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Reddit's 'stop reading this on the slow mobile web and read it in our fast app' persistent dialog is a similar scourge.

<comment><USER15> Seems like a lot of companies are trying to go "mobile first" while their apps are still missing core features found on their websites…so I just continue to use the websites, even if they are slower.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable in wanting simple things to work. Things like preserving newlines in code blocks in the Reddit app—since 95% of my subs are technical—or showing what comment of mine someone is replying to in the Imgur app—since it might be anything I've commented on in the past few days, or _years_ if someone was browsing in Random mode.

<comment><USER10> I just don't want 2 dozen 100MB apps on my phone when I can access all the same stuff with 1 100MB app.

My phone barely had enough memory for the apps I do want. Their website stops working on my phone? Fine, I stop using their service.

<comment><USER16> Exactly! The number of services that actually _need_ to be an app to accomplish their goal is staggeringly low compared to the number of apps out there. I would far rather use a well-designed website that works for everyone with a web browser over a bloated, ugly app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An HN commenter pointed me towards this bookmarklet recently, which removes such 'dickbars'. I find it invaluable, especially as someone who presses Space to page through an article. (I've modified it to ensure that the page body is always scrollable, which is something that goes hand-in-hand with dickbars.)

javascript:(function () {document.body.style['overflow-y']=document.body.style['overflow']='auto'; var i,elements=document.querySelectorAll('body *'); for (i=0;i<elements.length;i++) {if (getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='fixed' || getComputedStyle(elements[i]).position==='sticky') {elements[i].parentNode.removeChild(elements[i]);}}})();

</comment><comment><USER18> Click the link and start to read, I am certainly familiar and similarly annoyed with the first complaint: >Every Medium site displays an on-screen "sharing" bar that covers the actual content I want to read. This is particularly annoying on the phone, where screen real estate is most precious.

I open the link to the listed example, and mobile.twitter.com covers the top 25% of screen with a login prompt(likely an app store redirect if I take the bait? I use, seldomly, 'Tinfoil' client app from FDroid if I want to login to Twitter), and the bottom 25% with the notice about the ever evolving 'privacy/divulgance' policy. Oy Vey... Really makes me appreciate the few text only, practical UI, bullshit free sites I have left to visit online, like this one.

<comment><USER19> Maybe you just need to buy one of these new smartphones with a stupidly tall 18:9 display.

Jokes aside, screen space on mobile devices stopped being considered precious by publishers and designers long ago.

<comment><USER20> It's still considered precious by me, and I stop visiting sites on mobile that don't also value it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Totally agree. I now sigh when I see _another_ article on Medium. It's just so damn frustrating - I come to _read_ the article, I don't want be encouraged to share it before I have even have had the opportunity to read the first paragraph.

And don't get me started on the irrelevancy of needing to download a mobile app purely for the purposes of reading what should be a bog-standard web page.

<comment><USER22> It seems to be a holdover from the social media goldrush, where no web app was complete without a way to follow people and so on. Thus you 'need' the app to get push notifications about the latest scribblings of your network.

Of course, you don't really, because you can just as well follow the same people on Twitter or whatever.

Most traditional media orgs don't even have that excuse, of course, and are merely trying to cajole you into reading the stuff in a place where you can't turn off the ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Along with these complaints, I wish there was a greater sense of urgency among publishers to reduce page bloat. Some news sites require megabytes of javascript, video, and god-knows-what to display a couple kilobytes of text. It's crazy out there.

<comment><USER24> And if you act today, we'll throw in a little lightning bolt icon! Oh wait, is AMP good today or evil?

<comment><USER25> Evil every day. It breaks tabbed browsing and pins one of those stupid bars to your screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's a recent (past couple of months?) website-simplification tool, [https://outline.com](https://outline.com), which I've been using heavily. Advantages are that it's fast, the styling's pretty good, it works on most sites, and you can simply add it (and a tailing '/') ahead of a URL to view it.

I first ran across it on HN. I have _no_ idea who's running it or why, though the domain seems to have been used by a Knight Foundation grantee a few years back. The contact email hasn't answered those questions (though they've answered a few others), and domain registration is through Perfect Privacy.

If anyone has any information on this, I'd love to hear it. (I'd submitted an HN item on it a week or two back.)

On Chrome/Android, it's what I'm running most long-form content through for reading, as design is simply too annoying (and variable) on too many sites. It's been a few years now that I've said: web design isn't the solution, web design is the problem.

The fact that Medium screws this up is particularly ironic for all the reasons Gruber states.

Even the NY Times is better viewed via outline.com (or [https://archive.is](https://archive.is)) _if you want to be able to select and copy text from it._ Such as, say, to look something up. Or quote it in an essay.

Otherwise, I see an Internet adpocalypse arriving, sooner rather than later. A browser, or other tool, which simply strips all this crap off and gives a stiff middle finger to site design seems imminent.

For the small handful of app-based sites which really need full app status, sure, throw Chrome or Firefox at them. But most stuff doesn't need that.

<comment><USER27> [https://outline.com](https://outline.com) seems to work great on single articles.

Through try it on a feed like [https://outline.com/daringfireball.net](https://outline.com/daringfireball.net), and it's completely broken.

Obviously this is not the use-case though.

<comment><USER26> There's a "report problems" link (you may have to load up a working page to see it), which allows you to submit bugs.

I've found sites which don't render, render incompletely, or have artifacts (one had, for whatever reason, a framed outline around the text). Letting 'em know what doesn't work may help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've just noticed that Medium has also broken the back button (at least in Firefox for Linux). That's a pet peeve of mine, and it makes me angrier than most dark patterns because it's so damned pointless. Like, do you think I'm not going to leave because it takes multiple actions? Or that I'll be anything but less likely to return to a site that hijacks navigation for no reason?

I dunno. So common, and so nonsensical.

<comment><USER29> More often than not, it's just a bug. A side effect of the react/vuejs SPA world we live in. Fewer pageloads can be a good thing, but if not engineered properly, a much worse user experience than perceived faster loading.

Using the History api correctly is trickier than most people think.

<comment><USER28> I guess I would buy that, and I've had my own (mostly lost) battles with the history API. I just expect better of a company like Medium. It's their _thing_ , ya know? Being readable, clean, serious, non-intrusive. If Medium isn't that, they're just another random blogging platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why do people post on medium instead of just posting on their own personal blogs or websites? I understand the appeal for laymen who are not technically inclined, but I see so much content on medium from the ostensibly 'hacker' crowd, and I fail to see why anyone would write there instead of improving their personal brand by posting it on their own sites and blogs.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER31> Basecamp published an article explaining their migration to Medium [https://m.signalvnoise.com/medium-has-been-great-for- us-35d9...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/medium-has-been-great-for- us-35d9b0cc665d)

> People often ask me why we switched to Medium. There were a variety of > reasons, but one was reaching a new audience, and another was aiming for > wider distribution. But maybe the top one was curiosity — let's see if we > can learn something new.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This doesn't add much to the discussion but the term _on-screen "engagement" turds_ , as Gruber puts it, is what I'll be calling them in the future. Really cuts to the heart of what marketing/business development teams have served up to everyone.

I wonder what kind of conversations take place when they're considering implementing this UI bloat. "People love sharing, let's help them share!" Like they're actually helping readers, rather than realize it's a rhetorical lie to help them get past the fact that they have no respect for the end user and are singularly focused on meeting a KPI that will net them more money than the creators of the actual content - you know, the reason why people are even on the fucking website in the first place.

<comment><USER33> "If we made it clear what was happening, nobody would ever click on that!"

Actual quote from someone I was working with on designing a webpage. He wanted us to basically sign our user's up with his site automatically without them knowing.

I feel it applies to most web-design nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've had a number of heated discussions over the years about whether some new site/app I'm working on _needs_ these social sharing buttons slathered everywhere. They're absolutely a scourge.

In my experience they've often been considered non-negotiable by marketing folks, even when faced with metrics showing that nobody ever actually clicks them.

<comment><USER35> Even without clicks they act as tracking beacons which is valuable to the publishers selling ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> So I do most of my non-work read of IOS devices. I just avoid / block sites like this. Hey Yelp, when you do not let me go to page 2 in the browser and want to force me to use the app, I stop looking at your site.

<comment><USER26> If you ever have 2nd thoughts, you can also generally workaround a block by utilising [https://archive.is](https://archive.is) or [https://outline.com](https://outline.com)

Appending the original URL (with a leading "/") to that will open the page directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone who uses light gray on dark grey for their blog shouldn't be complaining about Medium.

>> Safari already has a built-in Sharing button. It has all the options for sharing I need.

And the people that don't use Safari?

<comment><USER38> Firefox has the same. Not sure about chrome, but given the ubiquity of the share bar in iOS, I'd be moderately surprised if it wasn't there.

<comment><USER39> Chrome on iOS also gives you a share button (albeit buried under a dot- hamburger menu).

Even if no native share button is available, I wouldn't use any share button provided by the website. Those rarely do what I want them to. I'd just copy the URL and paste it wherever i need it to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> And the scourge of that fucking "Open in App" button. THAT alone makes me hate Medium. I understand people's ire at the persistent sharing bar, but that doen't bother me nearly as much.

</comment><comment><USER41> Even worse are the app based "dickbars". Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, etc... all seem to think that embedding a webview is the helpful rather than an extra annoying step.

<comment><USER42> They do it because it keeps you in the app more and reduces bounces from native app sessions. I'm saying this with firsthand experience at one of the companies you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> That's why I love Firefox's Reader View button on the address bar. I click it even before the page loading completes and instantly clean view.

</comment><comment> Digit-Al If you expect all your journalism for free you'll end up with journalism that is worth exactly what you paid for it.

<comment><USER44> True enough. And yet, now that the Internet gives us choice across 100+ publishers with a few keystrokes to query the browsing history database, how do we pay the journalists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> > When people click a URL and see that it's a Medium site, their reaction > should be "Oh, good, a Medium site — this will be nice to read."

Is John Gruber that gullible? Most startups out there are led by someone with a "messiah syndrome". They all believe they are going to change the world; but really it's all about money. Find a "niche" and then juice it till it bleeds, they have no other purpose everything else is just PR. Or worse, "rationalization" where the person actually belives all their own bullshit.

Medium's builtin design and clean UI also gives an aura of professionalism to a lot of shitty writing.

Good luck getting a feed that works for you. My feed was continuously assaulted by random feminist rants with clickbait drama titles.

I also love how they write completely meaningless update notes for the iOS app. Eventually they were called out for it on the iOS app when they posted a huge block of morse code in lieu of actual update notes. Then in the following updates, they add some sarcastic message in their iOS update notes mocking _their own users_ who were unhappy with their random/meaningless update notes. What a bunch of losers.

Also their recommendation system sucks. And your feed routinely gets articles "recommended for you" without any reason given (some say "because you follow Such-and-such-Tag, but many don't).

And even putting my rant aside, what do we have to gain from centralizing all expression through a few controlled gates like Facebook or Medium? Who gains from this?

</comment><comment><USER46> Gruber's site (1) attracts one of the richest advertising targets in the world, iOS developers (2) serves as a leader for directly monetizable media such as speaking events and podcasts aimed at the same elite audience. His business model enables his reading model. Also, which is more distracting: a "dickbar" or Gruber interrupting his podcast to read a spiel?

<comment><USER47> The dickbar, by far. The spiel is a momentary interruption, usually delivered w/in the flow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I have to admit I actually use social sharing buttons because fb on mobile (the site, not the app) somehow doesn't create a link preview when I copy- paste URLs like it does on desktop.

So often a social sharing button is the easiest way to post an interesting article to my fb. But that's entirely a workaround for as stupid bug in a zillion dollar website.

Everything sucks.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm using uBlock to pick and hide all those elements that steal space on the screen of my phone. It's a much better browsing experience. I won't use those buttons anyway.

It's one of the reasons I'm using Firefox even if Opera has text reflow. Sometimes I wish there is an Open in Opera addon.

</comment><comment><USER50> A small reminder to throw some money to Ghost if you can and that it's an amazing open source publishing platform _actually_ focused on the reading experience: [https://ghost.org/](https://ghost.org/)

</comment><comment><USER51> My fav feature in iOS/MacOS next is the ability to stop autoplay video. I would rather dodge dickbars than fight the cleverly blocked pause button and jumpy video box. If I want to play your video I will click play.

</comment><comment><USER52> The market will decide. People moved _to_ Medium because it was so user- friendly and ad-free. People will move to the next thing (whatever that is) for the same reasons.

</comment><comment><USER53> Just pre-pend outline.com/ to any Medium link to remove it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Bloggers using Medium is primarily from the same camp as who added these "UI/UX enhancers": smug post-hipster developers who worship all these things like "growth", "disruption", "engagement", "UI/UX", "mobile-first" and companies like Uber and Snapchat. Medium is the most cancerous and disgusting blog service ever.

</comment><comment><USER55> [https://idontwantyourfuckingapp.tumblr.com/](https://idontwantyourfuckingapp.tumblr.com/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Obligatory link to a "kill sticky headers" bookmarklet: [https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky- headers/](https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/)

This has saved me a great deal of annoyance, especially on my smaller-screened mobile phone.

</comment><comment> jim-jim-jim I'm on an iPhone 5 and can't adblock without side-loading an app, so I just keep javascript disabled in Safari instead. Keeps these bars from appearing on Medium and everywhere else.

They still shouldn't be there in the first place though.

</comment><comment><USER57> this is yet another reason why people use adblockers and things like noscript

</comment><comment><USER11> You can add this bookmarklet to the Firefox or Chrom[e|ium] bookmarks bar to remove it with one click:

        javascript:document.getElementsByClassName('js-stickyFooter')[0].remove();

<comment><USER58> even better, you can have certain page elements removed permanently without any clicking ... with adblocker uBlock Origin you can right click page elements and block them, I "cleaned" the UI of many apps I use like this ... I often hide bars like this or even whole menu sections or features that I just don't use and would only add to the clutter

<comment><USER59> I just downloaded it right now. This is AMAZING. Usually I spend a minute or going into the console and deleting nodes all over the place. This is much easier!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I agree with the sentiment, but Gruber can't seem to write a simple article without name checking multiple Apple products and services. They're completely irrelevant here but he still manages to mention his iPad pro review unit and how great safari is.

</comment><comment><USER61> This from the guy whose site is one of the most difficult to read sites on the net. I've always resented this site on so many levels. First among which was its illegibility. Come on now...

Also all of the posts from this guy are complaint after complaint. Nothing constructive or interesting ever, just peeve after peeve. Like two weeks ago he complained about FB being closed. Week before that it was something else. Just banal.

<comment><USER62> _This from the guy whose site is one of the most difficult to read sites on the net. Come on now..._

Come on, seriously? It's one column of text with one column of navigation and a single small non-animated, non-video ad unit, and the text/background has decent contrast. What's the difficult part?

You don't like his opinions fine, but difficult to read that site is not.

<comment><USER63> I find the text very small (that's easily remedied); the white on blueish gray to be difficult to read; and most of the space on the page wasted. Even hitting cmd-+ a couple times I can't get text to use more than half the horizontal space.

<comment><USER64> Yeah, a baseline font size of 11px is far too small. These days I tend to advocate for 18px or 21px for body copy (Medium is 21px).

<comment><USER65> The design of Gruber's site is very 2010. It looks quite dated now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Drawdown: The most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse Global Warming - <AUTHOR> http://www.drawdown.org/ <comment><USER3> So zero political solutions here? Just a list of technological aspects of a solution?

How can people not know that the problem here is _getting people_ to do something, it is definitely not that we don't know what to do which is a minor problem in comparison.

What about a group who have starving children and will clear-cut a forest to feed them no matter what agreements are in place? How much violence is used to enforce this plan and how is it organized? How are these projects funded, where does the money come from and what is done with those who are powerful and won't cooperate?

It is hard enough to get international cooperation now, and as climate related refugee problems multiply exponentially it will not get easier. Technocrats are not saving us here.

<comment><USER4> Doesn't it seem though that politics is a deadlock, with nations playing a game of chicken that has no winner? It's a case of the tragedy of the commons. No power broker is going to sacrifice their economy or political backers enough to make a difference, as there would always be someone else with a more short term view take advantage of their temporary weakness.

It seems that there is no feasible solution other than technical, however unlikely a technical solution is.

<comment><USER5> The problem is that the economical background of our society is based on exploiting all resources and pushing the limits of the society itself (both with high reproduction rates and in mass production of goods).

If we want to change the climate situation, we first need to change the whole economic system and related political measures.

<comment><USER6> Speaking more as an engineer than as a contrarian here: If that's your plan, you're going to fail at it.

<comment><USER3> That's definitely what Kings used to say. And chieftains of hunter/gatherer tribes before them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nit picking on one issue: Nuclear. I'm glad they at least listed it as a solution but I feel that there's way too much agenda in here that isn't based on the science.

 _It has potential to avoid emissions, but there are many reasons for concern: deadly meltdowns, tritium releases, abandoned uranium mines, mine-tailings pollution, radioactive waste, illicit plutonium trafficking, and thefts of missile material, among them._ [1]

Nevermind:

* that >60% of the carbon-free electricity in the USA comes from nukes right now,

* that by displacing air pollution, nukes worldwide have saved 1.8 million lives and prevented 65 billion tonnes CO2-eq [2]

* that nobody died or is expected to die from radiation at Fukushima

* that uranium enrichment is by far the easiest way to illicitly traffic weapons materials (which can happen without any nuclear power)

* that Hanford was a cold-war nuclear weapons facility that did not prioritize waste storage, and that it was totally unrelated to commercial power generation

The capabilities of nuclear energy to thwart climate change are real and gigantic. Getting costs down would help, and the Koreans have been doing an amazing job at that. The French electrified their whole country with nukes in 10 years by standardizing designs and that's been wildly successful. This solution should have said something like: "If we can standardize a safe Gen III+ reactor and get costs down, nuclear can and will grow as our climate champion."

[1] [http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/energy/nuclear](http://www.drawdown.org/solutions/energy/nuclear) [2] [http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197)

<comment><USER8> Coal, gas, etc increased global warming - but we are talking about timescales of <100 years (sometimes <50) to reverse those changes with appropriate action. Nuclear is not like that, it takes thousands of years (plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24000 years) to undo or cleanup anything related to nuclear. When we started with coal/oil/gas/etc - we didn't know at that time about these side effects. Now the same could be said about nuclear as well. If radioactive material 10 times the size of chernobyl fallout [1] was released, would that mean the perpetual end of earth, possibly leading to a worse than climate-change kind of scenario? That's why countries like Germany have started shutting down nuclear power plants. Its like favoring a known evil rather than an unknown devil.

Note: I'm neither a proponent or opponent of nuclear energy.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#National_and_international_spread_of_radioactive_substances)

<comment><USER7> I think you're right that that's what people are concerned about. I'd mention that we have 17,000 reactor-years of commercial experience over the past 7 decades in nuclear. We understand the risks fairly well, though admittedly we are still learning. It is clear that nuclear reactors net save millions of lives over fossil-fuel alternatives. 10x Chernobyl fallout would be very bad but it would be nowhere near the global warming predictions we're seeing. Additionally, Chernobyl was a bad design without a containment running a risky experiment with safety systems turned off. The 4 reactors at Fukushima got hit with a huge earthquake and tsunami and no one died from their failure, and we know from models that no one will die from the radiation that was released. It's exceedingly unlikely that modern reactors would go Chernobyl, much less 10x Chernobyl.

Germany has turned away from clean-air nuclear energy and replaced it with brown coal and more clean-air renewables but that's costing them a lot [1]. That's expensive fear, and only feasible for the richest of nations.

Side note: Long half-life doesn't necessarily correlate with problems after an accident. It's actually the short half-life stuff that is biologically concentrated (Sr-90, I-131, Cs-137) that can cause the biggest issues. For instance, Uranium-238 has a 4.5 billion year half-life and it's not a radiological hazard (this just means the energy comes out really slowly).

[1] [http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean- energy...](http://fortune.com/2017/03/14/germany-renewable-clean-energy- solar/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's assume that for a moment all their numbers are correct (it's a huge assumption) and let's also assume that they will all be achieved (cough).

Their numbers add up to approximately 100% of 2017 annual fossil fuel emissions.

That means that all of the excess CO2 currently in the atmosphere is beyond the reach of the combined 80 solutions they propose. Greenhouse gas production rates continue to increase (Earth has plenty of semi-natural processes of its own that are only starting to be triggered). You can't double-count these 80 solutions, so they're inadequate to even stop the growth.

"drawdown" seems a misnomer. There's no reversal here, only a slowdown.

This is the most challenging engineering problem ever to confront mankind, and we haven't risen as a species to meet it.

Now, time to get back to the latest ICO, because some things are important.

<comment><USER10> "Let's assume that for a moment all their numbers are correct (it's a huge assumption)"

The entire framing of their approach is to only consider peer-reviewed literature -- holding themselves to the highest standard we have, the one most free of "assumption." It is rhetorically deceptive to open by characterizing them as making assumptions.

<comment><USER3> Only if you discount the evidence that we are almost always optimistic about these things at this stage of the research.

Anyone good at doing high level policy accounts for the fact that you always need a lot of margin for optimistic error when combining multiple solutions.

<comment><USER10> Citation please. Bonus points for noting the irony that you are criticizing an impeccably supported work with sweeping (but unsupported) assertions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Table of the top 100 solutions:

[http://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by- rank](http://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank)

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the most interesting way to sort this data is not by "total atmospheric reduction" but rather by "savings". I.e., where do the economic and ecological incentives align?

EVs and Wind & Solar are unsurprising gold/silver/bronze winners.

District Heating is an interesting idea I had never thought of. And it synthesizes well with other top winners outside of the energy production space, most of which boil down to "improved density and less moving around".

IMO these are all big wins from a lifestyle perspective as well, all other things equal (of course, not all other things are equal in most places -- schooling, safety, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER13> I hear often that educating girls will curb population growth in poor countries.

Has anyone actually proven that this is a causative relationship and not correlative?

<comment><USER14> Yes [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/11/the-relationship- betw...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/11/the-relationship-between- womens-education-and-fertility/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think trying to argue specifically about climate change in the US at least - is dead - politics as such prevent the scope of change needed - that said - <USER2> as a planet should work more on sustainability - there are technological and cultural solutions that can be put in place, (mostly by private industry) to make the way we consume our planets limited natural resources more sustainable.

Carbon as far as I'm concerned has turned into a straw man preventing us on working on the larger (and more complex) problem of sustainability.

I think another thing to consider for a moment is, if we want a "western" standard of living for all people living on this planet, we either need less people, or we need to figure out how to use the limited resources we have a lot more efficiently.

Humans in the end will adapt to a warmer planet - the range of habitable places however may change - this says nothing to the other animals living here - they're not so lucky.

<comment><USER16> Fewer people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It only covers two types of solutions, reducing carbon emissions and carbon sequestration. What about more extreme or dangerous solutions such as weather manipulation and reflecting solar energy through materials in orbit?

<comment> photon-torpedo They are dangerous, as you say. If you had to choose between global warming and a new ice age, what would you prefer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My personal thought is to make a geoengineering company to perform carbon sequestration. At first you would figure out how to grow large amounts of switchgrass and or algae using some type of automated planting either in deserts or in the ocean. Then start breeding or make GMO plants that would more efficiently sequester carbon. Also, try to make other systems that would lower temperature like a space based shade or changing the albedo of the ground or atmosphere .

<comment><USER18> Doesn't seem this stands to make money, so not many people will be interested.

<comment><USER19> We humans are really inventive in ways of making money. Bringing more unhospitable lands back to sanity? Allowing for more consumption without the need to curb lifestyles? A lot of money can be made from here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry, this is all flawed. Just an agenda of constraining ourselves and limiting human influence. Won't work. We humans are inherently driven to expand and use more and more energy for our needs. This is a given. Any solutions trying to ignore this are doomed.

What we need is technological solutions to _reverse_ global warming effects. Like iron fertilization of oceans.

</comment><comment><USER20> No geoengineering?

<comment><USER21> Yeah not sure about geoengineering but if you look at global CO2 emission and absorption, man made emissions are still small compared to nature - see this in giggatons [https://static.skepticalscience.com/images/Carbon_Cycle.gif](https://static.skepticalscience.com/images/Carbon_Cycle.gif)

From a practical point of view if you want to absorb huge amounts of CO2 finding ways to influence the natural processes might be the way.

(pic from [https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than- natu...](https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural- emissions.htm))

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Howdy! I work in cleantech, and I guess it's that time again for a what-can- you-do-about-it post :)

To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

==So what can you do about it?==

The biggest thing this article doesn't say that is most relevant to the HN audience is that you can work at a new energy technology company! Our industries are out of the R&D stage and are currently focused on scale and growth[1], and we need as many smart people as we can get. There are lots of companies hiring software engineers (including mine).

==How do I find a job fighting climate change?==

I'd recommend browsing the exhibitor and speaker lists from the most recent conference in each sector (linked below). Check out the companies that interest you and see if they are hiring.

        * Energy Storage[2][3]
        * Solar[4][5]
        * Wind[6]
        * Nuclear[7]
        * Electric Utilities[8][9]
        * Electric vehicles[10]

Also, if you're in the SF bay area, I'd recommend subscribing to my Bay Area Energy Events Calendar[11]. Just start showing up to events and you'll probably find a job really quickly.

[1]: [https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new- inte...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new-internet/)

[2]: [http://www.esnaexpo.com/](http://www.esnaexpo.com/)

[3]: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy- stora...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy-storage- summit-2016)

[4]: [https://www.intersolar.us/](https://www.intersolar.us/)

[5]: [http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/](http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/)

[6]: [http://www.windpowerexpo.org/](http://www.windpowerexpo.org/)

[7]: [https://www.nei.org/Conferences](https://www.nei.org/Conferences)

[8]: [http://www.distributech.com/index.html](http://www.distributech.com/index.html)

[9]: [https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge- world-f...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge-world- forum-2016)

[10]: [http://tec.ieee.org/](http://tec.ieee.org/)

[11]: [https://bayareaenergyevents.com/](https://bayareaenergyevents.com/)

<comment><USER23> I have a background in electrical/computer engineering, but much of that has faded from memory. For the past 15 years I've been a software developer, starting out in the embedded space, and today working on cloud telecom. I feel like I don't have the background or domain knowledge required to break into a career in clean energy, though it's a space that interests me a lot (both intellectually, and because of survival-of-the-species reasons). Do you have any suggestions how I might break into this field, beyond attending the events you listed (or is that enough?)? Is there a need for my skills more or less as-is, or am I looking at a steep learning curve and more "entry-level" positions until I can train up?

<comment><USER10> You sound like an excellent candidate for an SWE position at quite a few cleantech companies "as-is".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I stopped at "telepresence". This is silly, and as published as a pay for book, I suspect it will actually cost the environment more from it's printing and shipping than the influence it will have to make a change.

</comment><comment><USER25> Before proposing multi trillion dollar plans it'd be good to figure out how to model cloud cover and the effects of the oceans.

<comment><USER10> This comment constitutes gaslighting. The primary expression of climate change science, the IPCC, has been based on models which incorporate cloud cover and oceans for decades. Here is the first sentence of their landing page on models:

"Numerical models (General Circulation Models or GCMs), representing physical processes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and land surface, are the most advanced tools currently available for simulating the response of the global climate system to increasing greenhouse gas concentrations (criterion 1 -- see list here)."

[http://www.ipcc-data.org/guidelines/pages/gcm_guide.html](http://www.ipcc- data.org/guidelines/pages/gcm_guide.html)

<comment><USER25> Read a bit further in the page you've linked.</comment></comment></comment>


All Magic Leap Patents Have Been Assigned to J.P. Chase Morgan as Collateral - <AUTHOR> https://www.kguttag.com/2019/11/10/all-magic-leap-patents-have-apparently-been-assigned-to-j-p-chase-morgan-as-collateral/ <comment><USER2> The title and tone of this article make it sound unusual that the company used its IP as collateral.

You can get better loan terms (such as the interest rate) if your loan is secured. If you are going to get a secured loan, the default is that it's secured by 'all assets', which includes IP. In order to perfect a security interest in IP, you need to make this type of filing -- and a lender will be especially sure to do so when making a secured loan to this type of company because the company likely has little other assets of value with which to secure the loan.

<comment><USER3> Using patents to secure loans is not new. Most Famously Tesla did it.

What makes it "news" is that Magic Leap was able to raise $2.6 Billion without having to resort to using the I.P. as collateral. It usually does not make the previous investors happy and you usually resort to this when you can't raise money any other way. It is also a one-trick-pony in that you can't do it again and future potential investors know that the I.P. is already gone if the company goes bust.

They just announced a $280M investment from NTT Docomo, but base on my and other people's estimates, Magic Leap was running out of money while burning through about $600M/year so that only bought them about 5 months of runway.

<comment><USER4> How is magic leap burning through so much cash? It can't be all salaries and at the same time they don't seem to be selling a ton of devices at a loss.

Are they building factories or something?

<comment><USER5> Nepotism. The people running the company hired all of their friends and family into kooshy do-nothing positions.

<comment><USER6> I've seen this ! My fav-no-useful positions I've seen filled was a "Business- Analysis" and "UX-Expert(basically a graphics artist)". The B.A spend his days drawing the most useless and not even pretty diagrams of how the "new business" which never arrived was going to work and integrate with our current systems(which he had no clue how they worked or what their limitations were). Lol those graphs and diagrams had more fantasy in them than all of the LOTR combined. Once we got to retrenchments he was the first to go and the loudest to protest of the unfairness !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > _Magic Leap is estimated to have over 1,800 employees and 19 office sites._

For a company that has no consumer product and has no revenue, to have this many employees is quite shocking to me.

<comment><USER8> They have had a consumer product out for over a year. You can find it clearly available for purchase on their website: [https://shop.magicleap.com/](https://shop.magicleap.com/)

<comment><USER9> Huh. I had no idea it was for sale. I'm guessing not many of those two thousand employees are in marketing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Magic Leap is spending somewhere between $600M and $800M per year and that they have burned through all of their initial $2.4 Billion._

Doing what? They've sold a few thousand glasses, and have done a fair amount of R&D. But $2.4 billion? That's 12,000 engineer years.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm really hoping magic leap makes it in the long run. They're a huge tech employer in south Florida, and frankly we could use more tech companies. I'm always afraid a recession will wipe them out and flood the market with experienced engineers.

<comment><USER12> Couple years back when I was dating a girl in Ft Lauderdale, I was looking at companies in Florida. Interestingly enough, it was the only (!) state that was cutting funding for the CS program across its state programs.

Ended up in NYC, and now, Washington D.C.

Don't think a single company can save the tech economy of a state that doesn't seem to think its worth the investment. That being said, I love Florida and it would be awesome to build out a tech sector down there.

<comment><USER13> Newly elected FL governor, in the first 6 months in the office, offered some positive developments in this area.

Computer science and math were addressed explicitly

[https://www.flgov.com/2019/06/24/governor-ron-desantis- signs...](https://www.flgov.com/2019/06/24/governor-ron-desantis-signs-cs- hb-7071/)

\---

Highlights of CS/HB 7071 include:

      -    Establishing the "Florida Pathways to Career Opportunities Grant Program," which provides competitive grants to eligible institutions to create or expand apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs.

      -    Requiring a reverse transfer between Florida universities and colleges to award an associate in arts degree to students who have completed necessary requirements.

      -  Requiring career centers and Florida College System institutions to establish regional career pathways guaranteeing college credit toward an aligned associate degree program for eligible students who graduate with a certificate from a career center.

      -  Establishing the "Last Mile Scholarship Program," that will pay for eligible individuals to finish their first associate or baccalaureate degree.

      -  Creating increased opportunities for students to take high quality computer science courses in high school by allowing students to count one course as either a require science or required math credit.

      -    Codifying Governor DeSantis' required audit of career and technical education, from Executive Order 19-31, as an annual requirement to ensure high quality pathways for students.

\---

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Magic Leap is spending somewhere between $600M and $800M per year and that > they have burned through all of their initial $2.4 Billion.

Is it possible for ML to be viable at all? Assuming they manage to make $1000 profit _eventually_ per device, they will need to sell at least half million devices each year. It seems militery usage probably won't be able to fund this alone as the size of US militery is just 1.5M. In US, 40M iPhones are sold each year and one can think of largest possible market for $2000 devices is likely around 5M to 10M per year. So 10% of that is certainly possible if there was a compelling experience device.

</comment><comment><USER15> FYI - normal venture debt companies like WTI include IP as collateral as part of their standard deal docs. Just know what you're signing.

You as founder are most likely going to be the one trying to sell your IP if your startup fails and your debt guys will essentially give you a commission to do so.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow. You think Jimmy would have learned after getting hosed down on WeWork...nope.

Just anecdotal but JP Morgan appear to be involved in quite a few shitty deals this cycle. I know they are going hard in syndicated loans, which is very hot right now, wonder what we will find out when the tide goes out.

</comment><comment><USER17> Looks like his server is in damage control, Web Archive has a copy but is in the same state for me: [https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.kguttag.com/2019/1...](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.kguttag.com/2019/11/10/all- magic-leap-patents-have-apparently-been-assigned-to-j-p-chase-morgan-as- collateral/)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for providing the link to the archive.

I have up the capacity, but when the cite hits #1 on Hacker News (as it is right now), it looks like the traffic is still overwhelming. It probably does not help that I put the larger associated document for people to download (I was going to put a link up but the link was not working in the Chrome browser).

<comment><USER17> Thanks Karl! Seems like it is fine now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interestingly when I have gotten credit from Silicon Valley Bank they have always secured the debt with all the assets _excluding_ IP. Why? Because they can't do anything with the IP while I presumably can find a buyer and pay them back.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm amused that anyone ever took Magic Leap seriously. It's basically Apple's Newton; a good idea without the tech, without the infrastructure, without the content to sustain it and make it useful. Check back in after 10 years.

<comment><USER20> Newton's second release of hardware and software was actually pretty solid. It needed some user training (there were many features that simply weren't discoverable, but were slick one you knew), and it was expensive.

It certainly wasn't a toy with a couple half-baked demos and no actual apps. There was a healthy third party hardware and software developer ecosystem. A lot of people (including me!) wanted to see it work, and it was frustrating to have Jobs kill it right when it was getting traction.

<comment><USER19> I wanted to see it work too; I bought one! But in retrospect I think it's clear that it was a product that was about 10 years before its time. Once it was possible to build something (iPhone) about 5x smaller, about 10x faster, with about 100x the connectivity, and about 10x the display resolution, that's when it really took off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What happened to them? They were in the news a lot for a while but lately it's totally quiet . I thought they finally had released something. Has anybody tried their tech?

<comment><USER22> Yeah, they have a devkit you can get. Its neat but with no install base and Hololens looming over them, there's not much to talk about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Magic leap founded in 2010

Raised $2.6 Billion

Revenue: $0?

<comment><USER24> It wouldn't be $0, since they have likely sold a few tens of thousands of dev kits. Gross profit on those devices is likely zero or worse though.

<comment><USER25> > a few tens of thousands of dev kits

I'd be willing to bet that it's more like a few thousand at most. Does anyone here know anyone with a Magic Leap One (maybe yes, since this is Hacker News, but still...)?

<comment><USER24> Fair. Karl is probably close to the mark with his estimate of 5-8k. I would also guess that the vast majority of those are in the hands of other companies in the AR space rather than end-users of AR experiences.

<comment><USER26> ^ this. I am unable to buy a pair (in London), but I have some loaned to me from ML so I can help someone deliver a product (for festivals, not the store/consumers)

Both these things continue to point toward the hype machine over mass market/sales/consumer consumption

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So what is up with AR?

The way i naively imagine startups work is that they identify a market, develop a product for that market, then sell the product to the market.

So where have the AR startups gone wrong? Did they not actually identify a market? Does the market turn out not to exist? Have they not been able to develop a product that adequatly fits the market? Are they unable to sell a perfectly good product to the market for some reason?

<comment><USER28> As an outsider taking a quick look, this reminds me of the Apple Newton.

\- Hard problem, immature technology that barely works as yet.

\- Correct strategy would be vertical markets that have a particular need of the product, would pay enough per unit to pay for the R&D, would put it in the hands of professionals who can be trained to work around the inevitable bugs.

\- Company instead unwisely aims straight for the consumer market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> If any wanker goes on about Theranos but didn't call out Magic Leap years ago delete them from your feed.

And ML still goes on.

We know its technologically impossible yet people still go on like its something.

But the sad thing is, it's hard to say the actual value of the patents, to ML nothing but as a troll maybe a fair bit.

</comment><comment><USER30> How did they ever raise such capital?

I want in on it. Capex for R&D is prohibitive.

<comment><USER31> A company I used to work for was recently acquired because they were supposedly working on some kind of block chain technology. After the acquisition, all 'work' on the block chain was stopped and everyone reassigned to other, more mundane projects. Word is, the ex-CEO somehow sweet talked the acquirers with some fancy PowerPoint slides. He spends most of his time coming up with these proposals and shops them around to unsuspecting VCs and acquirers. Took him a few years but seems like he finally got one to bite.

I suspect many smaller tech firms are similar.

<comment><USER32> A buddy works for a permanent startup. Has never shown a profit. He's convinced it's a money laundering operation. He likes the work, so he doesn't ask too many questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a recordation of a security interest, not an assignment.

<comment><USER3> The patents show as Assigned to J.P. Morgan Chase.

I'm not a lawyer, but I think it was done this way so the I.P. would immediately become J.P. Morgan Chase's in the case of default. We don't have access to the contract between Magic Leap and JP Morgan Chase to know what the exact terms and condition.

Regardless, whereas before Magic Leap was able to raise money without putting up the I.P. as security for a loan.

<comment><USER33> No, this looks just like any other recorded security interest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As expected. I don't feel they will ever deliver anything.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is just an anecdote, but everyone and everything about Magic Leap has always struck me as pretentious, elitist, and ego-driven.

I walked by their booth at GDC a couple years ago, and tried to struck up a conversation with the representatives. I was essentially shooed away and given a sticker.

Later on that night, an invite to their Magic Leap party was sent to a telegram channel with an open invitation to 'come hang'. The only problem: the invite was sent 10 minutes before it was wrapping up, almost like a "look at our party you aren't invited to".

<comment><USER36> if they sent an invite 10 minutes before it was wrapping up it's because nobody showed up lol

<comment><USER35> We walked by the venue earlier that night and saw a pretty buzzing party (with lots of security).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Remarkable how banks just, always win.

</comment><comment><USER38> Big businesses taking over, yet again.</comment>